Sunday, November 8, 2015

Hail Caesar 61AB and Mayhem 1756

Celtic Warbands on the move

Well to start with Pål and (who are two thirds of this blog project the last one is Ulf) are going to put together our own rules for the French Indian War. This project is well on it's way. We are currently playtesting it. We plan to post the rules on this blog . All I can say thus far is that we are tinkering with a big skirmish game, with roughly the same size as Donnybrook and Lion Rampant. Each unit will consist of somewhere around 4-12 miniatures. You need about 4 units to have full force. The project name for this game is Mayhem 1756.

Here are some pictures from our latest play test of Mayhem 1756.....

The French led by the infamous Captain Castroulle attacks a Anglo-Amercan settlement

Rangers trying desperatly to stop stem tide of French invaders

The Rangers advances

Indians plunder the settlement and capture the locals

Captain Castroulle has fallen -the end of the French attack. Will the evil French menade return...has Castroulle really been killed? Stay turned on this blog and you will see...

The basic mechanism will be based on the roll of a few dices in order to determine the number of actions available for the individual unit. One dice for each unit and a dice for the commander. So if a
unit fails to activate the commander can use his dice to get the unit going( if he is with range of course).

The Rules will cover the French Indian war, the American Revolution and possible even the war of
1812. We will keep you updated on this project..

Hail Caesar - Romans vs Britons

A picture from our first Hail Caesar game this year

Then we have something else running. We begun last week with a playlets to get our brains tuned into the rules. We will play Hail Ceasar, and if all goes according to plans we will stage the campaign outlined in the Hail Ceasar Britannia sourcebook. The pictures below shows a few scene from a scenario that I put together a few years ago. We used it once more for our first Hail Caesar game
session this year. Two feuding Celtic Warlords face each other. One of the Warlords have support
from the Romans who will enter the game at a later stage and tilt the balance. In our first test game
the Romans were a bit too late on the scene to have any impact. The Roman supported Warlord
managed to stop his foe on his own.

The Second game was called "We won't Pay"

Apraxus the tax collector and his escort

Essentially its a scenario dealing with advanced tax evasion. The Cilician Apraxus has taken the job as Roman tax collector. Apraxus is supposed to pick up taxes among the Celtic population somewhere in the Roman provinces in Britain. Unfortunately a Celtic rebellion has just started headed by Queen Boudicca. .....and she hates Romans and she is set upon stopping the flow of taxes
coming to the Roman authorities.

Queen Boudicca attacks with her war wagons

In this scenario Apraxus has a military escort when collecting the taxes. The escort consist of both infantry(Legions and auxiliary) and cavalry. Apraxus has an ox cart in which he carries the collected taxes. The aim of the scenario is for the Romans to protect the cart and lead it out of harms way( of the table in game terms). For the Britons it is matter of capturining the ox cart. It is in other words a classical " wagon train scenario". The scenario has 10 rounds before reaching it's conclusion

The Road fork clearly visible

The Romans start at the village and then move along the road that leads off the table. In the middle of the gaming table there is a road fork that will lead the road in three different directions. The Britons are fielded in a hidden position. The player has to mark his position on a map prior to the game. Once the Briton decide to move his units they become visible. They also become visible if the Romans comes within one move from the Hidden units. The Roman cavalry can thus be quite useful to scout ahead of the main train.

Britons vs Britons - the cavalry serves as Roman auxiliary

The Britons must be concentrated in their deployment otherwise the order radius will make difficult to make them move. One could take a chance and hope that the Romans will move into initiative radius( units within initiative radius do not have to be ordered to attack a unit). However since the
road split in three forks that is quite a bit of gambling for the Britons. The Briton players choose to concentrate the forces in two different position and within ordering radius of one of the two commanders present.

The road ahead is blocked for the Romans

The ambush was triggered just when the first Roman unit reached the road fork.

The path was blocked ahead. The Romans had only two units leading the way and the main force was in the rear. The Britons on the other hand committed a sizable proportion of it's war bands to wild goose chase when trying to hunt down the Roman Cavalry. Thus the fight that actually mattered was kind of balanced and the game came was decided in the last round. Queen Boudicca managed to steer her war wagons straight into poor Apraxus tax cart. So no taxes for the Roman oppressors this time....

The end of the game - Boudicca captures the ox cart with all the taxes collected